The Blackhawks and their remarkable season-opening 24-game point streak — which crash landed in Colorado on Friday — have crossed over into the mainstream, underscoring yet again the value to the NHL of marquee teams, and so much the better if they’re big-market clubs, as well.

Yet, the caps achieved though the lockout and imposed on the league by the Board of Governors — what are we left with now, a quintuple cap? — not only mitigate against the Blackhawks remaining intact for very long but reduce the ability of organizations to maneuver within the collective bargaining agreement to construct powerhouse clubs.

Chicago’s roster contains a pair of critical players in Duncan Keith and Marian Hossa operating on front-loaded contracts prohibited under the current CBA. Without the ability to front-load, manageable cap hits for each — $5.3 million for Hossa; $5.5M for Keith — would have been impossible.

Hence, Chicago either would have been unable to afford either of those two players or another player or two of their opposing array of stars and support players.

The impact of the eight-year limit on contracts has been felt already, with impending unrestricted free agent Ryan Getzlaf re-upping in Anaheim for the maximum term at a cap hit of $8.825M per. That’s indicative of where the league is headed — higher cap hits for marquee players, thus fewer marquee players per team.

It’s a spread-the-wealth mentality that may be attractive in the boardroom but is ugly on the ice. The NHL for decades has adopted a lowest-common-denominator approach — even in pre-cap days by refusing to enforce anti-obstruction rules on the ice, thereby negating the advantage of its most talented players and teams — rather a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats philosophy, even as the Blackhawks have done just that.

Chicago is going to face a painful decision over the summer regarding Hossa, the 34-year-old winger whose contract runs through the 2020-21 season. The cap-recapture formula would inflict penalties of a minimum of $4.6M per season and a maximum of $9.2M per if he were to retire before the expiration of his contract at age 42.

The Blackhawks, who will have approximately $4.6M to fill six NHL roster spots next season, may have to use an amnesty buyout on Hossa over the summer in order to avoid potential future debilitating dead cap space.

So it goes in a league that does everything possible to legislate a common one-size-fits all venture even while the sports world recognizes that uncommon excellence and uncommon excellence alone — such as demonstrated by the crossover Blackhawks — is worthy of celebration.

* It is intellectually dishonest to believe the NHL should enforce a zero-tolerance policy on headshots while also supporting the league’s current stance on fighting.

In 2013, with all that we know — and all that we both don’t know and likely are fearful of learning — about blows to the brain, it is simply no longer possible to accept that what happened 26 seconds into Wednesday night’s Toronto-Ottawa game — in which the Leafs’ Frazier McLaren concussed the Senators’ Dave Dziurzynski with a series of punches to the head — has any place in the sport.

This is nothing less than cringe-worthy business, red-meat to the ravenous galleries. Fighting — whether staged and completely senseless or spontaneous and perhaps with value — is a vestige of some unspoken code in a sport that has evolved in many ways but has not evolved fully enough.

Football is far more violent than hockey. There is much to abhor about the culture of the NFL, but at least the league has zero tolerance for fighting.

A brain injury is a brain injury is a brain injury. A forearm to the head should be no less tolerable on the ice than a fist crashing into an opponent’s jaw.

It is time for the enlightened folks to lead the way.

* The asking price on the open market for impending free agent Corey Perry, Anaheim’s 2011 Hart Trophy winner, likely is to be seven years (the max for players not signing with their own teams) at between $9.5M-and-$10M per.

The questions are: a) whether the Ducks will attempt to cut their losses by dealing the winger as a rental if they are unable to sign him before April 3, thus diminishing their chances of making a playoff run this spring; and, b) whether the Maple Leafs, pretty much alone among money-printers with that cap space to spare for 2013-14, will pony up.

* If you’re starting a franchise with a forward, you might select Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin or Steven Stamkos. Or maybe you would go with John Tavares. You couldn’t go wrong with No. 91.